After a decade of war The Pentagon has been confronted with the raging wildfire of Military Rape/Sexual Assault and the burgeoning diagnosis of Military Sexual Trauma. With one third of all women wearing a uniform becoming a victim while serving during a time of war the military realizes they have a problem--a problem that has set me unintentionally afire.

Recently the dirty little secret of military rape was thrust into my field of vision by a discussion on the Midtown Productions Documentary, “The Silent Truth”, recounting the murder and rape of PFC Lavena Johnson of the United States Army in 2005 in Balad, Iraq while serving our nation in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I began to identify an uneasy feeling swelling within my chest. I needed to extinguish this growing flame. Every attempt I made only added to this unrest making it worse.

Perhaps it was that through this last week white men (their photos displayed in the identifying corner of the members comment box) would systematically post on the comment thread discussing PFC Johnson's dead and desecrated body on the website, conversationally, in a military member "group", detached with disbelief and complete self assured doubt that rape and murder of our female service members is a reality. That stoked my fire!

That the report in question must be a weird form of activism or just plain untrue rants that required more details, like pictures of her burned body, or of the bullet hole in the left side of her head when she was right handed or the refusal to believe her very Father's account of what he witnessed as a veteran himself when he went to view her remains before he placed her in peace and buried her that upset me.

Or their refusal to watch the three videos from reputable news reports embedded in the article became incendiary devices.

I don't know, maybe it was the choice to ignore versus acknowledge numerous posters supplying links into the conversation thread that provided additional sources for the credentialing of that particular rape and murder that left me feeling my temperature rise. People simply refuse to use the resources available to be informed.

Because, we all know, women douche with acid and set ourselves on fire after shooting ourselves in the head with our non dominant hand, as our statistically recorded and most common form of self induced death.

In an attempt to douse my growing internal blaze I broke my rule this week and replied on a thread about rape and murder of a US Army member. Pfc. Johnson was barely twenty when her mutilated body was discovered in a burning tent on her post in Iraq 2007. I did my very best to not "blow steam". The details are gut wrenching and you are welcome to take five seconds to Google, which too many network members would not do, and find out for yourself why her case has been the impetus for the government to re-evaluate the subject of rape upon on service-members by their brethren.

Maybe the embers were pre existing from memories of my husband reporting home after a several week stint in the "box", a place where they live as if they are overseas while still being Stateside, to prepare the soldiers for the rigors of their coming year long deployment into Iraq and his sharing of their "rape prevention" session.

At six foot one, 200 pounds he is not a small fellow. The instructor called him up for a demonstration. They called him "a big hoss". And yet the protocols of the Army's policy of never moving about the camp without a buddy and a gun was the point. Men are being raped during their deployments. They made it clear his size, knowledge of military combatants, and background as an elite Special Forces soldier gave him no safety assurances. They will attack in numbers, disarm and rape. "They" will rape men. The "they" are foreign nationals who are employed on the bases, brought in from several countries, and your fellow service members.

Recently I asked my combat medic spouse if there had been any cases of rape that he had to personally treat. I asked because when he had been in Kosovo he witnessed the reality of one of the most favorite tools of war and genocide: wartime rape.

We have had many conversations over the years about what he endured in Kosovo. From deactivating booby traps in torture chambers the Serbians used on other ethnic groups, walls of those chambers unintentionally decorated with splattered brain matter and reeking of decaying flesh, or cutting the electricity to the live electrical wires used on human genitals, my then sweet young boyfriend saw a few things I wish he was spared. I knew he was not oblivious to military rape, wartime rape and the consequences service members live with whether they are a direct victim, a witness to the systematic blowback within a unit , or as an aware human.

He told me one afternoon that "A female soldier had a bad habit". He is not blaming her. Yet her habit was indeed a very poor choice.

He continued on by sharing how she would get up in a time of day the military calls " 0'dark thirty". This is a time of day where the nether worlds of night and dusk meet. Most of us are asleep during the slow collision between a late night and early morning. If you have been around any active service-member you would know they often rise at this time of day.

Approximately during the hours of 3-4am she would go shower.

She would go alone.

This broke all rules on movement.

You are never to move alone. "Move" is as simple as going to eat, work out, report to your place of duty, and for women, if you were not near a toilet, as in there was not a toilet in your housing, and there isn't in most cases: you went together.

Two male U.S. soldiers, members of her camp, learned of her routine. They watched for weeks to verify it was a pattern. One morning they attacked her in the showers. She was found unresponsive and severely beaten. She was brutally sexually assaulted. She suffered facial trauma requiring massive immediate surgery and subsequent reconstructive surgeries. Bones were broken. She was left naked in the shower stall unconscious and discovered by other female soldiers hours later. She had no choice in reporting the incident. It became a matter of life and death getting her from her FOB (“Forward Operating Base”) to Camp Basra for stabilization and then transported on to Germany where the major health care facilities of the military are located for the continuation of critical care she now required.

Back on my husband's FOB a team descended to speak to the female soldiers. In between mortar strikes and the nerve wracking responsiveness of the Phalanx defense Units, often called R2D2's, the women were briefed on safety protocols. The women were separated from the men and a female Commissioned officer came to speak to them. They were given a lecture they have heard their entire military tenure. The lecture was to address the incident and take an additional opportunity to reinforce what services are provided, where to go, and what to expect if you actually access these services.

As men, you do not typically get told in the service, until recently, that you can be raped, it happens, be prepared, practice safety measures, carry your weapons, draw them if needed and be prepared to shoot.

If your number comes up and you join the ranks of 30% of all female service members that are indeed raped or sexually assaulted......blah blah blah.

Until he was gearing up to go to Iraq this past year this is the first time I had heard of warning military men of the dangers of rape.

Hallelujah.

Because men here in America, hear me: it is not a crime of sex, nor is it only gay men on other gay or straight men crime and no woman asks for it. Rape is about power and 60% of rapists know their target. 99% of all rapes are perpetrated by men. 1 in 6 MEN are raped or sexually assaulted. Approximately only 5% of reported rapes are prosecuted in our civilian courts and about 3% of reported military rapes are converted to formal charges. The Pentagon has publicly stated that their research causes them to suspect that only 10-13% of Military rape is actually being reported.

Let's work the statistical numbers and break this down.

If there are 100 military rapes a in a calendar year:

10-13 will be reported.

1.3 will face prosecution under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice/UCMJ.

Women in our society are made aware through every possible means that rape is part of our collective dynamic. Just ask a woman near you. She can tell you of all the briefings we are given through schools, out reach programs, churches, friends, men who care and through public service announcements on the news after a story of rape is covered.

We grow up with this as a part of our lives. It is in our collective vernacular, how rape effects women of any social and economic status, ethnicity, religious belief systems, ages, and more practically as a point to men, this is how we as a the female of our species experience our environment; most women personally know of another woman who was raped or sexually assaulted, if they are not a survivor themselves.

You would think that, because of the structure, honor and integrity our military prides itself in, rape would not be an issue and our military women would find safe harbor from society's shameful epidemic of rape while serving. Drawing from the UCMJ, Uniformed Code of Military Justice, that addresses all areas of personal conduct in and out of uniform, appearance, even addressing the highly private act of adultery, that rape would not be allowed and anyone committing rape would face severe consequences.

There is a systematic failure by our military to prevent and worse punish those who rape. This is not an opinion this is math. Again, if one third of all women in the military are raped or sexually assaulted there is indeed a problem. If there is over ten times as many rape victims being raped by their military community than there are total war dead over a decade of war on two fronts, then there is a failure in the system the military is utilizing to prevent rape and sexual assault.

According to the recent data collected on what is now being called "MST", Military Sexual Trauma, which refers to the mental issues from the assault, think of it as a sibling to PTSD, the numbers of rape are growing. In 2008 there were slightly over 1,000 rapes reported over the calendar year in our military. Now in 2012 the number is closer to 3200.

Do the math. Over ten years of war there have been at least 100,000 women in uniform raped or sexually assaulted while serving. I used conservative numbers of ten thousand per year to reach my conclusion. I took the mean number between reported cases and Pentagon statistics over the past ten years. Basically, Pentagon's very own investigations state that they "believe" they are only receiving accounts on10%-13% of military rape and sexual assaults.

More women are being raped every year than "we", as a country, have in total war dead as a nation in ten years of wartime activities which currently reports our war dead for both wars at 7,789.

"Sexual assault is a wider societal problem and Defense Secretaries Gates and Panetta have been working with the service chiefs to make sure the U.S. military is doing all it can to prevent and respond to it," Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, wrote in an e-mail to NBC.

In a recent February 2011 article by Michael Isikoff, a National investigative correspondent for NBC news, an official response by the Pentagon from Kaye Whitley, Director of the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office said, "This is a tough issue."

Whitely continued, "We're talking about changing the way people think and the way people feel … the research tells us it takes eight to ten years to change the culture."

These quotes were generated in a response to litigation filed in 2011 by 14 female service members against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, "charging that both have failed to take aggressive measures to deal with the problem or follow edicts from Congress".

The Pentagon believes due to the low reporting of rape that the number is closer to 19,000 rapes in 2011. That means thirty percent of our women who answered the call to serve our nation are paid back for their service with a crime against their person.

I know two women personally who served and are survivors of military rape/sexual assault and currently suffer MST. I had my own run in with wartime rape while volunteering overseas. I was tasked with notifying the family of an 8-year-old girl that she was raped and murdered. She was found redressed with her zippered pants on backwards.

I guess that could be why I found myself reacting with a slow internal burn to the posters on that particular network's thread. The reactions were polarized. Either, it was true and needed to be addressed, the women's replies, or the men's repeated reaction that these things just "couldn't be true," and that rape is "not a serious problem as they are making it sound for our female troops or they would address the situation " hits me hard.

And what these men do not know is due to the sheer numbers of unreported rape there is a very real reality that a women very close to them, the very woman that lays her head beside these posters, may be carrying the silent truth of being the 1 out of 4 who has been raped or sexually assaulted herself. For as much as women talk; we are often silent about rape. Only 1 out of 10 rapes are reported.

As much as we love and trust the man we live with we do not want you to ever look at us with a filter of "us" women being broken or damaged goods. We crave the looks of love and acceptance from you so much that we will carry these experiences the rest of our lives and never admit that we were once attacked.

I ask that people accept the truth in numbers of reports from government agencies, like the Pentagon, which does not want to have this reality of service members raping other service members. Sadly, military rape/ sexual assault and MST are a very real problem for these institutions who have been stretched too thin with the burdens of a decade of combat operations on two battlefronts. It will indeed require a complete shift in our collective paradigm as a people to change the way rape and sexual assault is perceived and punished.

I will not pretend to have some agenda or prescription to cure this ailment. I simply need civilian sexual assault, military rape, military sexual assault, civilian rape.....any RAPE or SEXUAL ASSAULT to stop.

Smith, A., 2005, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Boston: South End Press.

Tjaden, P. and N. Thoennes, 2000, “Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey”, Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Dr. Carl G. Jung

“…
the snake was not really a snake but a symbol for the human yearning for wisdom, the seductive power of the unkn...

I haven’t seen the movie
Fifty Shades of Grey
yet, but I already know it means that fundamentalism in religion is breaking down, with the inevitable consequences that will have on our future.
That is graphically illustrated by the problem of sexuality represented by the movie and the book by the same name, which has sold over 100 million copies.
As of today, it is still number 3 on
Th...

Author Stephen Fuchs has written a book that can bring world peace, if only every Christian, Muslim and Jew would read it.
It wouldn’t be necessary for them to agree with him, but only read the narratives as he explains them.
All would be changed for the better.

Rabbi Fuchs has spent a scholarly lifetime studying and teaching The Holy Bible, and particularly the books of
Genesis, Exodus, L...

As women begin to step outside the frames of their lives, as modern tools for communication enlighten them about the world beyond, the more curious they become. They begin to ask questions. Their expectations change, and they demand more from their lives. They dare...

Over the last half century, the Bush family has emerged as an American political dynasty. The family has produced Congressmen, Senators, Governors of two of our largest states and two Presidents. As the 2016 Presidential campaign starts to gear up, there is the possibility of yet another Bush candidacy and Presidency. So it is instructive to see how the family has operated in and...

As women begin to step outside the frames of their lives, as modern tools for communication enlighten them about the world beyond, the more curious they become. They begin to ask questions. Their expectations change, and they demand more from their lives. They dare...

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Dr. Carl G. Jung

“…
the snake was not really a snake but a symbol for the human yearning for wisdom, the seductive power of the unkn...

Civilization is a thin veneer.
Dr. Carl G. Jung spent most of his life observing how we are still barbarians at the depths of our psyche.
When he died in 1961 the world was at the height of The Cold War, which followed immediately on the two bloody conflagrations of World Wars I and II.
He warned us that...

Each one of you wishes to exercise your free will and experience happiness. Your free will depends upon the knowledge you have of your own power. Your happiness depends upon the love that you give and receive.

“
Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit.” ~ Carl Jung. The Red Book. Page 236.

"Carl Gustav Jung and the Red Book," an all day symposium [at the Library of Congress], featured presentations by prominent Jungian scholars.

Speaker Biography: Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasani is a London-based author, editor, and professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London WIHM/UCL. Shamdasani works discuss the history of psy...

During 2010, world renowned psychologist James Hillman* and Sonu Shamdasani**, Editor of
The Red Book: Liber Novus
by Dr. C.G. Jung, sat together for fifteen conversations about the implications to modern psychology of this long missing foundation of Dr. Jung’s
oeuvre.
These conversations are the substance of
Lament of the Dead: Psychology after Jung’s Red Book.
Their insights add important...

Dr. Carl G. Jung was an historian! Who knew?! His five-decade long study of the mystery of alchemy seemed a sideshow to me for the longest time. Why resurrect an ancient practice, which had been discarded by intellectuals for centuries? What does making gold have to do with it?

Gradually, over many years of studying the master’s work, it became obvious to me that it w...

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Carl Jung on the “Scientia.”Lecture VI 6th June, 1941
In the last lecture we began to speak of the "scientia", which could be best...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Carl Jung on “Meditation” in AlchemyLecture V 30th May, 1941
We began to speak about "meditation" in the last lecture and I have still some excerpts to read from the...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Alchemical Quotations"The philosophers have said: that no one could attain the science of the spiritual, unless his soul be divine and his nativity spiritual."
"It is by the revelation of the highest and greatest God...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Carl Jung on “the attitude which the art demands...Lecture III 16th May, 1941
In the last lecture we began considering the evidence, which is to be found in the writings of the...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

“The Mysterium” as Dr. Jung’s own “Enatiod...Appendix B
Commentaries pp.86-891
Age
Male
Enantiodromia of the life-type
It is difficult to force this image to make a statement.
Yet it is so allegorical that it ought to speak.
It differs...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]